


deck the halls

by emmerrr



Series: winter wonderland [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Tree, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerrr/pseuds/emmerrr
Summary: Ronan was usually very good at letting Adam sleep in on a Saturday morning, which is why Adam was surprised and not just a little disgruntled at being dragged out of bed when it wasn’t quite yet light on the first Saturday of December.Ronan plied him with coffee and bundled him into a coat and then into the car. Adam turned the heat up as high as it would go and sat back, arms crossed as he glared at Ronan.“This better be astronomically good,” he said.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: winter wonderland [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1217862
Comments: 13
Kudos: 192





	deck the halls

**Author's Note:**

> i had 2 requests on tumblr for pynch picking out/decorating the tree, so this is pretty much just that :)

Ronan was usually very good at letting Adam sleep in on a Saturday morning, which is why Adam was surprised and not just a little disgruntled at being dragged out of bed when it wasn’t quite yet light on the first Saturday of December.

Ronan plied him with coffee and bundled him into a coat and then into the car. Adam turned the heat up as high as it would go and sat back, arms crossed as he glared at Ronan.

“This better be astronomically good,” he said.

“It will be,” Ronan insisted, and he looked so bright and excited and rosy-cheeked that Adam didn’t have it in him to stay annoyed.

He rested his hand over Ronan’s on the gear-stick. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“You’ll see.”

“Oh, awesome, a surprise,” Adam drawled, so okay, there was still _some_ room for annoyance.

Ronan glanced at him with a smile. He started to sing: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happyyyy—”

“Fuck _off,”_ Adam said, but he was laughing, finally. He squeezed Ronan’s fingers.

After around twenty minutes on the road, Adam noticed signs for a Christmas tree farm. “Are we…?”

Ronan didn’t reply, but sure enough, he slowed down as they approached the turn off, then pulled into the busy parking lot.

“C’mon, Parrish, all the good ones will be gone soon,” he said as he got out of the car.

Adam followed. He’d never been to a Christmas tree farm before. They’d never had a real one back at the trailer, just a very ancient and small fake one with a set of string lights, the bulbs of which were mostly no longer working. It was a sad sight, but Christmases at the Parrish household hadn’t been fun for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t a time of year he particularly looked forward to.

This year, though, he was finally out of the trailer. He had his own apartment, and he’d be spending the holidays with Ronan and his brothers at the Barns. He was looking forward to it, immensely.

He just hadn’t been expecting to be dragged into the various holiday traditions.

“Come _on,”_ Ronan said again, grabbing Adam’s hand to hurry him along a little faster.

“You’re getting the tree _today?”_ Adam asked.

“Correction, Parrish, _we’re_ getting the tree today. It’s tradition.”

“What’s tradition?”

Ronan absently brought Adam’s hand up to his mouth and kissed the back of it, causing Adam’s stomach to do a little somersault.

“Every year,” he explained, “on the first Saturday of December, we’d come here and get our Christmas tree, then spend the afternoon listening to Christmas songs and decorating.”

It hit Adam now, that this was something the whole Lynch family used to do. It also hit him that it was something they wouldn’t have been able to do since Niall had died. And now Ronan was finally allowed back at the Barns, but Aurora was gone now, too. So much had happened so quickly.

The air smelled of pine and hot chocolate from a little stall that had been set up, and the place was busy; families picking out trees, bartering with the tree farmers, assistants helping people load them onto their cars.

Adam felt the enormity of the gesture of Ronan bringing him here, and stopped. As they were still holding hands, Ronan stopped too, and turned around to face Adam, confusion in his eyes.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Adam said, shaking his head. “It’s just...don’t you want to wait and do this with your brothers?”

Ronan frowned. “They won’t be back home until just before Christmas, it’ll be too late then. And besides, I want to do this with _you.”_

Adam’s heart swelled, but at the same time his brain cautioned him. “Are you sure?”

Ronan grinned and kissed him on the forehead. “Why else would I risk the wrath from getting you up so fucking early?”

Adam smiled and took Ronan’s hand again. “Alright, fair enough, lead the way. What’re we looking for?”

“A tree, Einstein.”

“Lynch, I _will_ murder you.”

Ronan laughed, less of the sharpness in it Adam was so used to, and more of a happy thing that was being coaxed out more and more.

“One that’ll look good in the living room,” he finally offered.

“Whereabouts there do you usually put it?”

“In front of the window that overlooks the fields. In the middle.”

Adam closed his eyes, picturing it. “Okay. Got it,” he said, and set about the task with boundless sincerity.

It only took about ten minutes to find the one. It was big but not _too_ big, and was very green and had plenty of branches for ornaments. Adam could easily imagine it in the space Ronan wanted it, and by the satisfied look on Ronan’s face, he agreed.

They flagged down an employee and paid up, and Ronan turned down the offer of help to get it to the car.

Carrying it between them, Adam asked, “Are you sure we don’t need help? This is pretty big, Ronan, can we even get it on the car?”

“I got us covered. Trust me.”

Adam sighed. He _did_ trust Ronan, he just also wished he knew the specifics of what they were going to do to secure the tree.

When they reached the BMW, Adam saw that there was a roof rack on top that he had obviously been too tired to notice on getting in. He looked at it dubiously.

“Will this even take the weight of the tree?”

“It’s supposed to take the weight of anything,” Ronan said.

“Ah. Dream thing?”

“Dream thing.”

“Soooo...does it work?”

Ronan smiled cheerfully. “Let’s find out.”

Together, they managed to get the tree well-situated on the roof rack, and it held easily. Adam made sure it was attached securely while Ronan doubled back for hot chocolates.

They sat on the bumper to drink them, looking out across the rest of the tree farm and the hustle and bustle going on there. It was the kind of day that was cold enough that you could practically smell it in the air, skies so clear that the low temperatures were biting. But it was made better by Ronan’s ankle hooked over Adam’s, by the heat from the hot chocolate warming his hands, by Ronan’s extraordinarily good mood infecting Adam with good cheer of his own.

Ronan used his finger to scoop out a dollop of whipped cream from his hot chocolate, and dotted it on Adam’s nose with an unrepentant grin.

Adam sighed, but even _he_ could hear how fond he sounded.

“You got something there, Parrish.”

“Uh huh.”

“Here, I got it.” Ronan lunged forward and licked it off too quickly for Adam to register. He yelped and lightly batted Ronan’s face away, laughing and scrubbing at his nose with his coat sleeve.

_“Hey.”_

_“Hey,”_ Ronan mimicked, not looking at all sorry. “In my defence, you should’ve seen that coming a mile off.”

After a moment of consideration, Adam nodded in concession, whilst also secretly plotting his revenge. “Fair enough.” He downed the rest of his drink and hopped to his feet. “Let’s go decorate this thing.”

Once they arrived back, it took some effort to get the damn tree inside. It was difficult to maneuver through doorways, and it moulted like crazy. Opal followed behind them as they painstakingly carried it through to the living room, picking up fallen pine needles and twigs off the floor and chewing on them.

They got it roughly where they wanted it, and then Ronan spent ages getting Adam to help him make tiny adjustments until he decided it was absolutely dead-centre. After that, Adam was officially starving so he went into the kitchen to make some grilled cheese sandwiches while Ronan vacuumed up all the dropped pine needles Opal had yet to get to.

With lunch out of the way, Ronan went up into the attic and passed several boxes down to Adam, all of which were labeled **XMAS DECORATIONS**. Adam carried them back down to the living room one by one, putting them by the tree before going back for more.

Ronan passed down the last one then climbed down the ladder and pushed it back up into the attic space. “Y’know,” Adam said as Ronan fell into step beside him, “it kinda feels like you only wanted me to help so you’d have someone else to do all the heavy lifting.”

“Obviously, Parrish, did you _see_ how many boxes there were?”

“I did see. Because I carried them all down. One by one.”

Ronan jostled Adam jovially and took the box from him.

Adam smiled. “I appreciate it, but that’s kind of an empty gesture at this point seeing as I literally carried _all_ the other boxes down. And also this is the lightest one.”

They reached the living room and Ronan put the box down, before wrapping his arms around Adam’s waist, pulling him close and kissing across his cheek before lingering on his lips.

“Tell you what. Next year _you_ can pass down the boxes and _I’ll_ carry them downstairs. Does that sound fair?”

It did sound fair, and it sounded like a promise, and it sounded like an invitation; Ronan wanted Adam this Christmas, and he’d want him next Christmas too. It made him feel warm inside and he pressed his face into Ronan’s neck and held him tight.

“Yeah,” he mumbled against Ronan’s skin. “That sounds fair.”

He pulled away, noticing the soft expression on Ronan’s face and filing it away to revisit later. “So. What’s first.”

“First, tunes,” Ronan said, heading over to the record player in the corner. He flicked through a few records until he found the one he was looking for, then put it on. A song Adam wasn’t familiar started to play, but there were sleigh bells in it so it was Christmassy enough.

“Next, lights.”

“Which box are they in?” Adam asked.

Ronan looked at the bulging boxes, then at Adam, and he shrugged. “I’ve got no fucking idea.”

Adam sighed. “Of course you don’t.”

The next half hour was spent unpacking all of the boxes and sorting out what was in them into two piles; one for tree decorations, one for non-tree decorations.

“When we pack all of these back up after the holidays, I’m organising it properly,” Adam said in exasperation as he pulled out a set of lights that were horrendously tangled with some tinsel.

He wasn’t looking at Ronan to see, but he heard the smile in his voice when he said, “You do that.” He flipped Ronan off without looking up, and was rewarded with a laugh.

As soon as everything was set up in a way that made sense to Adam, they started draping fairy lights around the tree. There were two sets of tree lights, and they used both seeing as how the tree was big enough to take that many, and also they had decided not to put any tinsel on it. (“Chainsaw will eat it,” Ronan said. “It’ll be bad for her.”)

Next came the ornaments. These came in various shapes and sizes, and a lot of them seemed to be homemade. Adam held up a crocheted penguin. “Does it matter where any of these go?”

“Nah,” Ronan shook his head. “Anything goes anywhere.”

There were a lot of tree ornaments, which was good, because there was a lot of tree to put them on. It was a slow process, because they kept stopping to dance together, Ronan humming along to the music in Adam’s hearing ear, or because Adam kept asking for the stories behind the various ornaments. There was a particularly heavy pair of crudely made reindeer ornaments that Matthew had made out of clay when he was little that never got to go on the tree because they were too heavy for the tree to take their weight.

Adam got to the bottom of his box of ornaments to find three left in there. Again, they looked homemade, but they were neat and light. All of them were Christmas stockings in different colours, with different toys sticking out the top, and a different name on each; Declan, Ronan, and Matthew.

Matthew’s was yellow and orange with a teddy bear and a candy cane poking out, Declan’s was blue and white with a baseball bat, ball, and glove visible in the stocking. And Ronan’s was red and black, a toy car and a gingerbread man sticking out the top.

Adam picked them up carefully and took them over to Ronan. “You should hang these ones up.”

Ronan finished hanging up a vaguely creepy Santa then turned to look. A small smile crossed his face, and he gently picked up the one with his name on it, almost like he was afraid he might break it.

“Mom made these when we were kids,” he explained. “The presents sticking out are some of what we got for Christmas that year. Matthew’s teddy bear, my toy car. Declan really wanted to join a little league baseball team but Dad wouldn’t let him. So they got him his own gear for Christmas instead.”

Adam watched as Ronan hung up his little namesake ornament near the top of the tree.

“What about these ones?” he asked, holding up Matthew and Declan’s.

“Leave them on the windowsill, they can hang their own when they get home.”

This was another tradition, Adam realised. The Lynch brothers always hung the ornament that had their own name on it. He stared up at Ronan’s a little wistfully. He reached up and gently brushed his fingers over the delicate lettering that made up Ronan’s name.

“Adam.”

He turned, and Ronan stood behind him, one hand in his jeans pocket. His expression was a little guarded, but it cleared at whatever he saw on Adam’s face. He leaned forward and kissed Adam high on his cheek, just under his eye.

“Here,” he said, and pulled something out of his pocket and pressed it into Adam’s hand. He felt the warmth of it.

Adam uncurled his fingers, and in his hand was a little stocking ornament of his very own. It was two different shades of green, and out of the top peeked the Magician tarot card, and a toy car. The toy car in Adam’s, unlike in Ronan’s, was the same one he’d been looking at in Ronan’s bedroom, right before they had kissed for the first time. The lettering of his name was made to look like vines.

Adam couldn’t stop looking at it.

“Did you dream this?” he finally managed to get out.

Ronan nodded. “Woke up with it this morning.”

Adam’s heart clenched; Ronan had been carrying this around in his pocket all day. “I love it,” he whispered, then reached up to hang it on the tree right next to Ronan’s.

It was the last tree ornament to go up, and Adam stepped back so he was next to Ronan, and he twined their fingers together as they marveled at the tree.

Ronan bumped his shoulder into Adam’s. “Not bad, Parrish.”

Adam grinned. It was all mismatched and colourful, and the ornament distribution wasn’t quite even, but it didn’t matter. “I think you’ll find it’s _perfect,_ Lynch.”

“Oh!” Ronan said, remembering something. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

He ran upstairs as Opal slunk in from the kitchen. She grabbed onto a handful of pine needles. “Can I eat them now?”

Adam put a hand on her head and she tucked into his side. “Not this one,” he said. “Take your pick from the trees outside, any of them are up for grabs.”

“Fine,” she sighed, like it was a huge imposition.

Ronan returned, carrying a chicken-wire rendition of Chainsaw wearing a Santa hat. He was grinning as he held it out. “Instead of a star,” he said proudly.

He handed it to Opal then swung her up so she was sitting on his shoulders, narrowly avoiding getting kicked in the face by wayward hooves. It took some explaining to get her to wrap chicken-wire Chainsaw’s feet around the branches to secure it to the tree, but she got there in the end.

When Ronan put her down, she looked up at her contribution, nodded in satisfaction, and slunk out again, presumably to eat Adam-approved trees outside.

With the tree now done, the rest of the decorations were quick enough to dot about the place. Various table ornaments, festive snow globes, candles, and wreaths were put up throughout the downstairs of the farmhouse. Over the fireplace, Ronan hung up five Christmas stockings, one for Declan, one for Matthew, one for him, one for Adam, and one for Opal.

They made the house feel full. Adam tried to imagine what it would be like to be here over Christmas with Ronan and his family, instead of back at the trailer where he usually spent Christmas trying to avoid his father.

He just couldn’t picture it; he’d have to experience it instead.

The thought made him smile.

“What are you smiling at?” Ronan asked.

“Nothing.” Adam shrugged. “Just happy, I guess.”

Ronan looked like he was going to say something, but then he changed his mind and shook his head. He was smiling too, though. He finished hanging the last wreath on the kitchen door, then dusted his hands off. “And that’s it.” He looped his arm over Adam’s shoulders. “Job well done, Parrish.”

Adam leaned into Ronan, relishing the way Ronan automatically pressed a kiss into his hair. How quickly they’d settled into this relationship. How right it felt.

“You say that, but there’s a pile of empty boxes and bags in the living room.”

“Good fucking point,” Ronan allowed. “Okay, how about you go and stack all of the boxes and bags and leave them upstairs for me to put in the attic later, and _I’ll_ make us hot chocolates and then put a movie on?”

Adam hummed this over. “I’m agreeing to this _only_ because you make a better hot chocolate than I do.”

“Big of you to admit that,” Ronan said with a smirk, then tapped Adam on the ass as he headed into the living room to tidy up.

In fairness, it didn’t take long to get all the empty boxes together, and by the time he got back downstairs after removing them, Ronan was just finishing up with the drinks.

Adam waited in the living room. Ronan had started a fire, and with the Christmas tree lights on as well as one of the lamps, the whole room was cozy and warm and inviting. He’d initially had homework he wanted to get done today, but he suddenly couldn’t find it in him to care; it could wait until tomorrow. Adam had better plans for tonight.

Ronan returned with their drinks, both piled high with whipped cream and dusted with cocoa. They smelled amazing, even better than the ones they’d had at the tree farm that morning.

Adam took his gratefully.

“Careful,” Ronan said. “They’ll be hot.”

He put his down on the coffee table, so Adam did the same, and they sat down on the sofa. Ronan pulled a blanket around them, then let out a contented sigh as he dropped his head back and shut his eyes.

Adam thought back to last Christmas. He could never have imagined, a year ago, that he’d get to have days like this. He was excited to see where the years to come would take them.

But for now, he was happy to have some peace and downtime with Ronan.

Well, relative peace, at least. He leaned forward and scooped out the whipped cream from the top of his hot chocolate. Then he smeared it all over Ronan’s cheek.

Ronan’s eyes flew open. “You sneaky _bastard,”_ he said with a helpless laugh.

Lightning quick, Adam licked a clean line through the cream on Ronan’s face, amid much scoffing and spluttering and laughing.

“Un _believ_ able _,_ Parrish,” Ronan said, grabbing a tissue to clean the rest of his face.

“In my defence,” Adam replied, “you should’ve seen that coming a mile off.”


End file.
